Imagine staring into a deep dark blue pool of calm water and getting lost in its depth.

Now imagine lying on your back on a floor of a museum and the ‘pool’ is the sky seen through a deftly designed 24-foot square ‘hole’ in the ceiling. Enter Skyspace and experience Joseph’s Coat by James Turrell at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.

Turrell’s kinesthetic art is an invitation to experience energy in relation to light, sound, wind, and the canvas of a changing sky by quieting the mind and observing. Opening our senses and our consciousness to the world around and within us, while lying on a bench or the floor to experience the sky, allows and even encourages a transformation of one’s perception.

The brochure given at entry to the sunset experience states; “James Turrell wants you to be aware of your active participation in perception – and see yourself seeing.”

Entering the courtyard of Joseph’s Coat, a gallery lined with long wooden benches felt to me like any other indoor courtyard until I looked up. The ceiling thinned at the opening to the sky. If inverted it could be a sheer dropoff without ledge or dimension. The floor was a slightly inclined square with a perimeter of drains to carry rain away and which double as light tubes for the sunset show.

I placed my mat on the floor between benches and noticed the small-leafed vines that climbed the plaster walls forming elegant green pathways upward. The scent of jasmine vines wrapped around a pillar nearby enlivened the air and brought greenery to the sparse courtyard.

Turrell’s Skyspace draws us in just by looking up, and I found that it offered me a chance to pause, to listen, to feel and yes, to see. The experiential nature of his work including lying on one’s back and watching the sky change, especially brilliant at sunset, is a dance between an artist’s work and the viewer’s evocative experience: the powerful essence of art. There for an hour, relaxing on my mat, hearing my breath, I tried not to fidget. I became mesmerized watching the grey clouds pass over following a strong summer storm. A train whistle in the distance caught my attention, like a Tibetan gong just before meditation.

The post storm breezes moved the clouds quickly and constantly changed the sky as if lifting layer upon layer of veils to reveal finally, a blue sky. A bird, then another, darted through the air on a strong gust followed by a jet’s contrail that curiously, as if on tiptoe, entered the square and moved diagonally from upper right to lower left, thinly sketched as if with a fine-tipped brush, then slowly dissolved by the wind into a series of thick wavy lines. Soon the remaining thick grey clouds thinned to wisps, faded to lighter pink, then to salmon and coral and with the help of the LED lights subtly projected up from the floor and elsewhere I couldn’t discern, the walls changed color too.

Deep ocean – blue sky set in and from the deepest part of the pool, a star, then another glimmered at the edge of the ethereal canvas. Cream to green to red walls and deep dark sky descending. We were entering the night. Or, maybe the night was entering the dozen viewers on the floor and benches of the Skyspace.

“How is it,” I thought to myself, “That this dance is ongoing every millisecond of our lives, at night quietly swirling above us and around us as we work, love, play and sleep? Yet, we are not aware of it.”

The movement and realization of energy, of dynamic molecules, and the give and take of this seemingly innocuous hole to the sky gave me a chance to pause, to listen, to feel and breathe, and yes, to see.

Molecules and light beams, daylight and darkness, starlight and Self and Other. To stare into a pool of space within the dynamic nature of changing light, makes life art and all that is, the world beyond and within us, Art. Clearly, it is a glimpse of the ongoing creative process. I’m a relative newcomer to the art of Mr.Turrell but through my discovery, I am drawn back… or should I say, drawn in again and again.

One can experience Joseph’s Coat Skyspace every day that the Ringling Museum of Art is open and two nights each week for sunset viewing. Yoga mats are encouraged. Check with the museum for specific schedules and details.

By Pamela Erickson, GLIMPSE journal correspondent. Erickson is an author, artist and librarian who lives on the Florida Gulf Coast with her husband and pets. Having taught for over 30 years, she seeks writing as a form of reflection, exploration, conversation and solace. Her novel, Each Other, is available here.

Paris vu par Hollywoodl’Hôtel de Ville de Paris5 rue Lobau

until December 15, 2012

Paris: Is there a city more fetishized by Americans? The city of love, the city of lights, the capital of art, Paris has long captivated even those who’ve never seen it with their own eyes. To whom does France owe this notoriety? Its diplomatic tradition, its art, its literature…and in large part to American cinema.

Indeed France’s rich culture makes its capital a likely target for Hollywood producers, and since the advent of le 7eme art, hundreds of filmmakers have tried to capture the city’s unique allure. A new exposition, Paris vu par Hollywood, at l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris examines the city these filmmakers have portrayed throughout the years: a version of Paris, that has perhaps more to do with the American psyche than with the urban landscape itself.

The exhibition opens with a quote from mayor Bertrand Delanoë, pondering this American fascination. Regardless of its origins, he concludes, it has thankfully resulted in countless occasions for the whole world to “revel” in the city’s beauty.

I don’t disagree with the mayor; Paris is a striking city. Yet the exposition’s premise feels at times a bit patronizing: Paris, a city rich in history, tradition, art, and passion has a special ability to inspire the United States–a country that has none of those things.

But then again, hasn’t Hollywood been patronizing the French since the dawn of cinema? The exhibit ushers us through different eras and thematic depictions of the capital, from silent historical dramas in the early 1900s all the way to contemporary action films (including, to my amusement, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Team America World Police). Amongst the intriguing memorabilia, photographs, and video clips, we see the same themes emerging time and again: an obsession with the guillotine, a fixation on prostitutes, and a deification of the artist. Paris is simultaneously glorified and demonized; as much a cesspool of hedonism as a circuit of existential liberation; a place just as exotic, barbaric and primitive as it is enlightened, modern and fashionable.

So perhaps it’s only natural that a young, Puritanical country be so enthralled with an ancient, decadent city. Yet just how much of Paris’s reputation was based in reality—and how much was a myth perpetuated by Hollywood studios? As the exhibition cites one 1930s French journalist as saying,

“There’s the ‘Paris Paramount’ and the Paris en France…and the Paris Paramount is certainly the more Parisian!”

Indeed the exhibit emphasizes the absurd amount of effort invested in the constructing this “faux Paris”. Aerial shots of “Culver City”, the part of MGM studios used to film An American in Paris (1952) attest to the scope of the illusion. It was interesting, too, to witness how the city’s image developed after World War II, when more and more filmmakers began to come to Paris to shoot on-site. Tones shifted, idealism waned, but a certain Bohemian dream remained personified by the City of Lights.

The exhibition is rich in enticing artifacts: amongst my favorites were a bill from Mary Pickford’s lunch at the Ritz (she had an omelette), Gene Kelley’s boots from The Three Musketeers (they were enormous!), and several Givenchy costumes worn by Audrey Hepburn (they were somewhat less enormous). Notable as well were striking set and costume designs for an array of films, including Jean Renoir’s Moulin Rouge, and Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.

For those less well-versed in cinema, I would have appreciated a more historical approach. While thought-provoking, the exhibition could have incorporated more context into its arguments, specifically regarding technological, political, and philosophical developments over the course of the 20th century. Nevertheless, I appreciated the collection’s clarity and organization, especially given its large scope. Paris has a separate museum for the cinematic history after all! Ultimately the exhibit is a success, delightful in its ability to both celebrate and critique the nostalgia that clouds our perception of city.

At the end of the exhibit, tourists and Parisians alike lingered at the back of the hall to watch a clip of Gene Kelley and Leslie Caron dancing on the banks of the Seine. The images are so familiar, yet so foreign; entirely fabricated, yet somehow more concrete than the city they represent. I suppose that for any given place, cinema—and art in general for that matter—is the closest one can ever get to seeing “the real thing”. But observing this universal transfixion in front of the projector made me wonder whether the real thing really matters at all.

Panoramic view of the Gettysburg battlefield, 1866. Image courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library.

It’s surprising to think that cultural tension can be mapped: that economic differences and opposing visions for the future can be detected on a flat piece of paper. Yet that is precisely what the Boston Public Library’s exhibition Torn in Two: The 150th Anniversary of the Civil War demonstrates. Showcasing maps from the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, the exhibit ion examines the relationship between conflict and geography during the American Civil War.

The first of the exhibition’s three sections, “Rising Tensions,” interprets the geographic and demographic differences that contributed to the first shots at Fort Sumner in 1861. Maps depicting the U.S. in the 1850s reveal the incongruous settlement patterns that belie the cultural incompatibility between the North and South. The dense conglomeration of cities, roads, and railways in the North is jarringly different from the spacious South, whose agricultural economy depended more upon the Mississippi River than on trains. Indeed, the pre-war maps of the South have a feudal quality, as plots of land are labeled and color-coded according to family ownership rather than administrative township. The section also showcases an interesting map charting the concentration of slave populations by township in the South. Apparently, Abraham Lincoln also found it fascinating, and used it to link emancipation policies with military operations.

With maps of the Western territories from the 1850s, the exhibition makes us consider what was at stake for Americans in the years before the Civil War. The country was undoubtedly expanding after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed settlers to decide on slavery’s legality by popular vote. Whose lifestyle would prevail in the new territories? Which region’s economic and moral values would dominate as the United States fulfilled its manifest destiny? One map of “the territories whose fate has yet to be decided,” illustrates the geographic and political scale of these questions. The North in blue, the South in red, the West in neutral white, one wonders what color will ultimately dye the vast, virgin West.

Detail - Panoramic view of the Gettysburg battlefiled, 1866. Image courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library.

The second section, “Nation in Conflict” addresses how cartography functioned during the war, both in terms of military tactics and popular engagement. Notably, most maps displayed in this section were published in the North. While the Boston exhibit is perhaps biased towards Bostonian maps (Boston and New York were also major publishing hubs), it’s true that in the 1860s, maps of Dixie were in high demand. The North, on the offensive, was at a tactical disadvantage. Neither politicians nor the general public knew much about Southern geography, and were thus hungry for more information. The exhibition asserts that the Civil War (not Vietnam!) was the first “Living Room War”, for even in an era predating living rooms, the media allowed the public to stay abreast of the action. Indeed, newspapers published over 2,000 maps and diagrams throughout the course of the war, more than they’d ever published before. The increased interest and political urgency led to great improvements in cartography during the Civil War.

The final section of the exhibition examines how memory is recorded in maps. Focusing on the decisive battle of Gettysburg, we are asked how our “common visual experience” arose from incongruous recollections of the conflict. We learn how technological advances, the advent of photography, and the federal government’s increasing power influenced cartography, and finally, we consider how slave narratives have helped modern historians map the Underground Railroad.

With its wealth of documents and textual guides, the Torn in Two exhibition is valuable for cartography and history enthusiasts alike. In fact, it’s valuable for anyone who has ever considered what unifies the United States, or who has ever questioned the permanence and authority of the seemingly static map. Can a map unite or divide a nation? Can it record the hopes and fears of a people? Can it mandate our collective memory? If you want to jog your brain down the roads these questions lead to, through the tangles of war, race, and nationalism, the exhibition continues at the Boston Public Library through 2011. But beware: these roads, and these answers, are as yet uncharted territory.-by Meghan O’Reilly

Beyond the visual representations we see, are highly complex issues dealing with sociocultural discourses, politics, psychology, history, media and marketing; issues that profoundly affect how the posters are designed, which messages they carry, how they are perceived, and how effective they are. The visuals contribute on many levels to the cultural meanings associated with the multitude of HIV/AIDS epidemics, spanning across national, social, ethnic, religious, and sexual groupings. Not only does culture influence the design of campaigns, campaigns in turn influence the way in which HIV/AIDS is culturally understood. As a result, discrepancies exist between the general assumption that HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns are inherently benign, because they are designed to benefit the health of individuals and society; and the critique from a number of cultural critics and analysts who believe that the campaigns are in many ways coercive instruments of power, designed to control our sexual practices and perceptions of minority populations and people living with HIV/AIDS.1,2,3,4

What follows is a discussion of a selection of the many complexities which lie behind the visual language of HIV/AIDS awareness posters.

Cultural Representations

It has been noted that in western countries since the mid-1990s the focus has shifted from the domestic epidemics to the African epidemic.5 As the visibility of HIV/AIDS within western countries themselves has diminished, the visibility of the African (Caribbean, Papua New Guinean…) ‘other’ with AIDS has increased; as one critic argues: “the image of African women who get HIV/AIDS from their unfaithful partners, then pass the disease along to their innocent babies, evokes more empathy than the faces of those who comprise the domestic epidemic.”6 Through benevolent charity appeals (e.g. Figure 1) and media representations we thus project HIV/AIDS onto ‘helpless’ and ‘hopeless’ Africans, and in this way ‘our’ safety is reaffirmed by gazing at the suffering of others in far off places;7 what Stuart Hall describes as ‘the spectacle of the other.’8 When viewing posters that are meant as charity appeals, one might question how the visual language is impacting on our perception of those for whom the appeal is issued?

When viewing international collections of HIV/AIDS posters, one immediately notes the differences between the visual language and messages displayed in western and non-western cultures. Though they were produced as serious vehicles of communication within their specific culture, posters from non-western countries might seem fascinating, curious, humorous, exotic, or even naïve to western eyes. These posters, however, tend to display a frankness and practicality surrounding the issue not present in many western campaigns, which frequently tend to be more focused on clever design, subtle messages and advertising strategies. The woman in Figure 2, for instance, simply states, “I know you are not faithful,” while Figure 3 pragmatically asks, “if I am infected by the AIDS virus then who will catch the fish?” What might western campaigns look like if they implemented a similarly matter-of-fact approach?

Body Representations

Cultural historian Sander L. Gilman has suggested that there is a curious absence of ill and dying bodies in HIV prevention campaigns.9 He notes that even the body with AIDS is portrayed as attractive and beautiful, showing no physical signs of disease (see for example Figure 4). He also points out that death is only present through symbolism, for instance in the form of skulls, skeletons, or tombstones, not through representations of the dying or dead body. Figure 5 illustrates this point clearly; it features a skull made up of beautiful bodies. Some exceptions exist, such as the (in)famous United Colors of Benetton advertisement, featuring a man dying of AIDS (Figure 6).10 Furthermore, in developing countries the ill body is more prevalent (e.g. Figure 7); perhaps because people there are to a larger extent visibly ill and dying of AIDS, compared to western countries with better access to HIV treatment. When viewing the exhibition, one might ask, how the absence of ill bodies and prevalence of attractive bodies affects our perceptions of HIV/AIDS? What does the symbolism of death, as opposed to actual discussion of the contemporary lived experience of HIV/AIDS, do to our beliefs about the epidemic?

Fear

Fear appeals can be defined as “persuasive messages that emphasize the harmful physical or social consequences of failing to comply with message recommendations.”11 Though much research has been done to determine the effectiveness of fear-based strategies in HIV prevention the results are inconclusive.12,13 Much of the research, however, seems to suggest that if fear is to have any positive effect the message must include certain components: 1) the threat must be perceived as likely and relevant to the viewer; 2) the viewer must believe that he or she has the ability to follow the message recommendation; and 3) he or she must believe that the recommendation will eliminate or reduce the threat. Some argue that if used incorrectly fear appeals are not only ineffective, but they may in fact be counterproductive.14,15 These are elements worth considering when viewing those posters in the exhibition that use fear as a strategy. For example, when examining Figure 8 and 9 one might ask: What are the consequences implied by the posters, and are these likely and realistic – e.g. does AIDS still equal death in western Europe as Figure 5 implies? Is it clear what the threat is and how it applies to the viewer? Is it clear what the viewer must do to avoid the threat of AIDS? Is it clear how these recommendations reduce or eliminate the threat?

Figure 9: “AIDS, the Killing Bite of Love,” The Netherlands, 1993.

Social Marketing

Increasingly those producing HIV/AIDS awareness graphics are incorporating “the use of marketing to design and implement programs to promote socially beneficial behavior change”;16 this has been termed ‘social marketing’. The premise being that rather than promoting a commercial product, a ‘social product’ is being promoted.17 One might say that in the case of HIV/AIDS the advertisements aim at ‘selling’ safer sex. This often means that HIV/AIDS awareness posters look similar to commercial advertising posters. For instance, chiefly display ‘ideal’ attractive bodies (e.g. Figure 10). Furthermore, in contrast to fear appeals that highlight the negative aspects of not using condoms, they highlight the positive aspects of condom use (safe sex is ‘sexy’, ‘fun’, ‘titillating’, ‘reassuring’, etc.) (e.g. Figure 11); or they use humor to capture the viewer’s attention (e.g. Figure 12). But how does the idea that health promotion graphics must compete with commercial advertising impact on the way in which the visual narrative of HIV/AIDS is told? Is it an advantage or disadvantage that they blend in or stand out from the plethora of advertising messages in the public sphere?

Though these are but a few of the many questions and issues connected to HIV/AIDS awareness posters, they give a small insight into the complexities that lie behind the representations we see, and perhaps allow us to explore the posters anew. For those unable to visit the exhibition in person, the excellent website allows for extensive online viewing of the exhibition.

Louise Kolff is a PhD candidate at the College of Fine Arts and the National Centre in HIV Social Research, University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia. Her article, “Dilemmas of Claiming Ownership in an Epidemic,” appeared in GLIMPSE issue #1, Is the Visual Political? in November 2008.